I think I am not alone in believing that anyone who works a full 40-hour week in a "real" job, no matter what it is they do, should be able to at the very least support themselves without requiring government assistance. Right now, assuming no payroll taxes or taxes of any kind are deducted (wishful thinking, I know), a person making $7.25 per hour, who works a full 40-hour week, never misses a day of work, and never gets sick, can look forward to making a whopping $15,080. in a year.

The problem is, if these people are able to survive at minimum wage, it's because of welfare and other government benefits. If those benefits were taken away, no one would be able to work at minimum-wage levels, and in theory, after a lost generation of people during the transition, the market would set minimum wage quite a bit higher. You can't have productive employees if they are homeless and hungry. But since we have welfare programs, we effectively subsidize corporations, allowing them to pay their workers less because the workers will still be able to live, even if it's very uncomfortably.

We call it welfare for the poorest people, but in reality, setting minimum wages so low and then relying on social programs to pick up the slack is just another form of corporate welfare. By mandating a higher minimum wage, we ensure that corporations are not profiting from cheap labor on the taxpayers' backs.